Making a best of list has been considerably harder for 2009. First things first, together with Can we’ve dug an immense amount of vintage Brasilian music, lots of easy listening, old soul/funk/disco gems and the quality on most of these records put 2009 music to shame. Face it, you can’t keep up with João Donato, Yma Sumac, Piero Umiliani, Prince Buster etc.

I haven’t listened to Grizzly Bear, Mumford & Sons, Mos Def, Natural Snow Buildings and lots of other stuff seen on mainstream lists.

Try as I might I couldn’t get into Animal Collective, Ben Frost, Converge, Fuck Buttons, Clark, Zu, Moritz von Oswald Trio, Leyland Kirby (although I appreciate bits of each).

I listened to lots of cassettes, CDRs of lo-fi music, drone, experimental stuff, but frankly most were either half baked, too short to be labeled proper releases, had a few good ones but sucked as albums, or too experimental to end up on a end of year list.

I’ve missed a lot stuff on say, mapsadaisical or milk factory’s list like Black to Comm, Hildur Gudnadottir, Symbiosis Orchestra, Elm etc. I’ve given some a chance, and they’re actually quite good, but it would have been lame to put them on without giving them proper airtime.

So, taking all of these into consideration, here are our mentions in random order. The followup to this post will be the top 20. Bibio and John Zorn has two albums written beside them as none of them have been decisive IMHO.